


Arrowhead

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Dirty Porn, M/M, zero plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 22:32:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie and Glenn found the best position early in the game - staked out the western guard tower - and everyone knows to clamber up the staircase while stomping their feet and talking up a storm.  <em>Coitus interruptus folks<em>, Daryl would holler, <em>get yer damn clothes on<em></em></em></em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Arrowhead

People have their prime spots. 

Maggie and Glenn found the best position early in the game - staked out the western guard tower - and everyone knows to clamber up the staircase while stomping their feet and talking up a storm.  _Coitus interruptus folks_ , Daryl would holler, _get yer damn clothes on_ , before he opened the door to take over the watch.  There’s a loading bay half concealed by wooden crates - and Rick had the misfortune of walking in on Carl once - heard those punched out little gasps and stopped before he turned the corner, backing away, stealthy as a mouse.  Adolescence, he thinks, is a bitch at the best of times let alone when you’re living with a group of adults who bunk one on top of another.  Rick’s observed his son with Beth, the way his cheeks flush, how he bites his lower lip, and Rick will watch when Carl leaves the room, stride stiff and awkward, the ten gallon hat pulled low over his eyes.  Daryl, who’s sly, (who teased Glenn and Maggie with mock innocence – _are you comin’?),_ is wise enough to leave Carl alone - and Rick’s grateful for it.  They give his boy whatever privacy they can afford.

Merle, for the brief time he was with them, didn’t give a damn.  He’d jerk off in his cellblock and let the sounds echo loudly, not hiding a thing.   “Sweet jesus, boys and girls,” he’d pant, “that’s good…the only thing better would be a little company.”

“Hope you saw it off,” Glenn would snarl, from the next cell over.

“Night, Gracie,” Beth would sing-song over the top of their voices,  further down the line.

The things is: there isn’t a lot of mystery to their group.   They’ve seen each other in extremis, hurt and bloody.  They’ve seen each other cry.

In the heart of winter, when they were on the road, there was one perfect day when the skies shone blue and the sun was a blanket of warmth.  It was hot without the humidity – a dry heat that soaked into the bones – and he’d watched Daryl, clothes and all, face plant into a still lake, arms outstretched like a bird.  He’d stripped his clothing off under the water and started scrubbing - shirts, cargoes, the Indian poncho he wore for the bike - then started in on his own skin; hair in his eyes, face intent, trying to get clean while the sun shone steady.

Maggie had paused, she looked over those clear, inviting waters then shrugged and followed suit, Rick too.  Beth sat on a boulder; a shotgun over her knees while Hershel paced the bank and Carl stayed by his mother.  They’d swapped out eventually, stumbling out of the lake in their underwear.  Hung their clothes over branches and rocks, shook the water from their bodies like dogs.  Daryl took over Beth’s position on point, rivulets running down his torso, crouched on the boulder with a shot-gun on his knees.

Rick had moved further away, keeping Lori within the periphery of his vision as she munched on a green apple.  The swell in her belly was pronounced by that stage – and Rick had one purpose, find someplace secure. There was grit beneath his toes, the air light as a feather against his skin, and it was the cleanest Rick had been in weeks. He had caught Lori’s half smile when she glanced over at him.  It was one of the good days, Rick now recalls.

There were things Rick would have liked to have said to Lori, things that he was going to say - there were things he would have screamed aloud, too - but he couldn’t trust his voice to whisper when the hurt was so fresh.  He wanted to tell her he didn’t blame Lori for sleeping with Shane.  In hindsight, with time, Rick also believes that was the one thing Lori never forgave herself.  He wishes he could have explained – if he closes his eyes, Rick can _see_ the expression Lori would have pulled – it’s hard to put into words but he never hated her for that; from the moment they met in high school Rick loved Lori with his entire being.  She thought he was dead – and in the end – it’s that simple, that’s all it boils down to.  _She thought he was dead._   So many of them were  – entire populations wiped out in a span of weeks – and Shane had told Lori Rick _was,_ that he’d seen the proof with his own eyes.

Rick’s not self centered – and in civilized life he hoped, no, he prayed – that if he were to die in the line of duty then Lori would move on, take each step forward.  That she would think upon him - fondly and with kindness - but more importantly, that she would _love_ again.  It’s what she did, and Rick never resented her because of it – whereas Lori, he thinks, never forgave herself. But Rick did blame her - _viciously, unforgiving_ – for that open-palmed slap on the side of the road. 

He’d been hit a thousand times before but that was the first blow that rocked him to his foundations.  It was the first time Rick wondered – actively - if Lori wouldn’t have preferred it if it were him lying in the fields afar, a gunshot to the spine, dead, instead of Shane.  If in the end, Lori hadn’t loved Shane _more._   Lori never forgave herself for sleeping with Shane, for casting doubt in the first place; whereas Rick never forgave the slap, Shane’s blood tacky on his hands - and between the two of them they never discussed either of those events.

Back on that perfect winter day, Rick had turned his face away from his wife and listened to his people as they fixed their clothing, passing a needle and thread back and forth.  Idle for once, food in their bellies, no zombies within earshot.  He found his eyes drifting toward Daryl, staring at the lean cut of his body, without seeing anything at all.

There are things that he wishes.  He wishes he had found Lori, seen the actual proof and not inferred it second-hand.  He wishes Carl never had to pull the trigger.  He wishes he killed those prisoners on the spot, and he wishes Lori knew she had every right to love someone after he died. 

That she didn’t do anything wrong.  

Strange, how that one has become glaringly obvious.

Aside from wishing, there’s a list of things Rick is grateful for.  That Judith doesn’t resemble either Rick _or_ Shane, that he doesn’t see their features in her screwed up visage, fragile toes, flailing limbs - instead, he sees Lori’s eyes and Carl’s fortitude, he sees Daryl’s nick-name (shortened now to just Lil’a), and Beth’s quiet song.  He sees how she’s passed among the group, soothed and cared for, and he knows Judith will go on. There are things Rick sees – plainly - that can take his breath away.

There’s a spot, high on the prison rooftop that Daryl likes to use.  A rung ladder leads up the side of the building, providing the only access point, the paint peeling off the rungs in flaky strips.  The roof itself is tarred over, not as high as the watch-tower but providing an over-view of the prison yard and nearby tree-line.  Unlike Merle, Daryl’s a little antsy inside the cell-block, and it’s unofficially known that the prison roof is Daryl’s ‘spot’. 

Rick takes the rungs two at time, arms and legs working as he climbs up the building.  He clambers over the side and just stops, lungs tight from the exertion.  Rick takes the scene in, stark as a snapshot.  Boots on.  Cargoes around his knees.  Both feet braced against the rooftop.  The sleeveless shirt is half unbuttoned, showing a flash of mid-riff, the first hint of pubic hair.  His hand is fisted between his legs. Rick watches the indolent stroke, how Daryl’s hips chase the movement of his own hand. 

It’s easy to step forward, to close the distance.  No attempt at stealth, boots crunching as Rick’s shadow falls over Daryl’s frame, steals over the crevices and paints his musculature dark. 

“You close?”

“Was,” Daryl grits out.  “Isn’t there a rule of etiquette around here?”

There _are_ rules around here, but in the last few months Rick’s rules have been mobile little fuckers.

The first time he saw Daryl jerk off Rick was standing guard in the watch-tower.  He didn’t pretend ignorance like he does with Carl - he didn’t give Daryl his privacy like he does with Maggie and Glenn and looked _elsewhere -_ Rick had watched.  Fingers pressed against the glass, staring down at the roof – the air so wet, humid, that it was like breathing underwater.

“Yeah,” Rick hums in agreement and squats down beside him. 

Close to coming or not, the interruption hasn’t flagged Daryl’s interest, his cock is lean like the rest of his body, a misused red as Daryl jerks at his flesh. 

The second time Rick saw Daryl jerk off, the other man looked straight at him from across the rooftop, as if he knew Rick was standing in the watchtower all along.  His expression was unreadable from a distance.  When he finished, Daryl dropped off the side of the building and disappeared down the ladder before Rick could move.

The third time, Daryl had crowded him up against a grotty wall in the heart of the prison, fingers callused and rough.  He brought Rick off expertly, in less than a minute.  He left Rick on his knees, mind obliterated of thought, before he had a chance to touch him back. “Thought you might want to participate this time, instead of watch,” Daryl had said, coolly, before he walked away. Rick knows that stroke, the deft twist of thumb and forefinger.  He thinks there was something cruel in their first coupling, or maybe it was just a lack of pretense.

Here, crouched on his haunches, Rick places a hand square on Daryl’s belly, flattens his fingers over the muscle.  He’s hot to the touch, sweaty.  Daryl stutters, eyes opening with the contact.  The crossbow and quiver lie within reaching distance. Rick says absently. “You mind…if I participate this time?”

Daryl’s brow draws together; he sounds pissed, a little breathless.  “I mind if you’re gonna yap in my ear while I’m doing it.”

“Not what I was planning.”

Rick’s seen Daryl’s scars, courtesy of Andrea when she clipped Daryl in the head from thirty yards.  Shane and Rick had dragged him inside, limp and unconscious between them.  Hershel had cut Daryl’s shirt off to get at the arrow wound in his flank, recognizing the bigger injury, then hesitated when he saw the extent of the damage, both old and new.  Shane had simply rolled his eyes, muttered _Figures_ , while Rick said nothing at all.  He didn’t ask about the scars in the farmhouse, he doesn’t comment on them now.  Instead, he wipes his thumb over the faint traces, the vicious lines that hook toward Daryl’s navel, and knocks Daryl’s hand out of the way, exposing his cock to the air. 

Rick’s thought about it.  He’s thought about it from the moment he first saw Daryl on the roof and failed to look away.

He’s thought about existing - living each day like the walking dead – and he’s thought about _living_ , the way he hoped Lori would live. 

Rick knocks his hand away and swallows Daryl down - until his throat is full, mouth stretched obscenely wide - choking on dick as Daryl grunts. It’s messy, and truth be told, there’s zero technique.  Rick’s been with Lori since he was seventeen.  There’s too much spit, too many teeth, and Daryl shudders under him, yanks on Rick’s hair, goddammit, and that stings.  Rick slams an elbow across his hips, pins him down best as he can, and tries sucking, pulling in every trick Lori ever used. 

“C—christ almighty, you’re shit at this,” Daryl gasps, squirming.

Annoyed, Rick wraps one hand around his balls, pinching the skin tight.  He can’t bring himself to be gentle, most of Rick’s gentleness bled out when Lori died. Daryl flinches, cursing, and Rick relaxes his jaw, lets his cock slide half an inch further down his throat in apology.  It’s different, different from anything Rick’s ever done, and there’s a savage joy to be found in that, to etch out a new experience devoid of ghosts.  Rick rolls his tongue against the vein, light-headed with loss of air - with that heady scent of male - a presence that reminds him of nothing and no one.

“C—christ almighty,” Daryl repeats, but the tone this time sounds dazed. He arches his spine, almost lifting Rick off the ground. 

Rick can work with that, he thinks smugly, and in his experience a willingness to try _anything_ trumps experience any day.  He draws off slowly, careful with his teeth, fingers still wrapped around Daryl’s balls.  His voice is rough.  “Keep still.  I’m tryin’ to get the hang of it.”

“Get the hang of it?” Daryl repeats.  He lifts his head off the ground, stares blindly down the length of his body in shock.  “You ain’t _done_ it before?”

“Mechanics are the same.”

“Bullshit they are, get up here…or turn around so I can get down.”

It’s tempting - it’s tempting because Rick’s cock is tenting his jeans like the Russian circus - he’s so hard he can’t see straight; he’s sixty-nined Lori plenty of times and there’s nothing unappealing about Daryl's offer - but more than that, Rick’s curious, and he likes to get a handle on things in his own time.   If Daryl puts his mouth on him, _anywhere on him_ , Rick thinks he’d be insensate in seconds, and he won’t learn a damn thing. 

“Later.  Lemme explore first.”

He’s not sure what the sound is that Daryl makes – might have been laughter – could have been a curse.  Rick’s throat is still sore from the stretch, the ache in his jaw just settling when he reaches for the quiver.  The tension in Daryl body ratchets, coiling like a livewire.  There’s naught but threat in his tone.  “You use an arrow on me and I’ll gut you.”

“No,” Rick says easily, smiling against his skin.  “You won’t.”  He chooses one with a green and white fletching, one of the newer arrows.  Daryl has a selection of them, both from the old crossbow he carried, and from when he made his own, using the bowie knife and carving down ash until it was a straight line, hunting down copper in junkyards.

“I’m using them tomorrow,” Daryl protests.

In reply, Rick rolls the arrow down the length of his cock - a little harder than necessary - watching the rosy flush of skin turn white where it traverses.  It falls off eventually and hits Daryl’s thighs, bolt and fletching resting on opposite legs - the body of the arrow making a dark bridge against paler skin. Rick lines up on the ground beside him, stretched out across the tar.  He checks Daryl’s expression, making certain violence _isn’t_ on the horizon, then swallows him again.  Slower this time, feeling his way, lapping at the pre-cum and head.   He looses track of time, warm heat on his shoulders, a willing body under him, an awareness that none of this is permanent.  It can be taken away.  They don’t make vowels or promises of forever – they’re not sixteen year old girls and saying _You’re mine_ isn’t an option - there’s just now, a siren-song of pleasure as he makes Daryl squirm.  Rick’s in no rush to finish, trying to draw it out, until Daryl’s breath hitches with need, the sound torn from his throat.  Languid, Rick shifts the arrow until it’s vertical, the fletching sliding against Daryl’s balls - the bolt pointed at his feet.  Content, he alternates between tongue and hard sucking, and when Rick’s breathless, giddy with the want, he slips the fletching into the dark spaces of Daryl’s body, angling it until he feels the rim catch, until Daryl jolts and it slips inside.

Rick pulls off when he feels Daryl's balls draw up, the skin tight as a drum, clear warning.  “Still horrible?”  The arrow's barely penetrating Daryl, half the fletching still visible. Rick rotates it, a mere half twist, and watches Daryl fall apart, cock jerking helplessly in the air, messing his own stomach and thighs. Transfixed, Rick watches him, committing every expression to memory.  There’s no pretense here, he thinks, and swipes a finger through the cum – tasting it curiously.  “You can use this arrow tomorrow,” he says eventually, “when you take the Governor’s eye.”

Daryl blinks, throat working as he stares at the sky.  “You’re kind of disturbing, Officer Grimes.” 

He sounds wrecked, Rick notes. “If we survive, you can disturb me in return, any way you want.” Rick stands, one hand proffered until Daryl accepts it.  Dixon pulls his pants upward as he stands, fastening them one-handed.  He uses his own shirt to wipe the cum from his stomach, then grabs Rick by the nape, pulls him into a kiss that’s at odds with every dirty act Rick performed. He shouldn’t be that gentle, Rick thinks, surprised.

“Good enough reason to survive.”

 


End file.
